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Henry I. Miller and Richard Cornett

“Sustainable” has become a buzzword that is applicable not only to agriculture and energy production but to sectors as far afield as the building and textile industries. Some universities offer courses or even degrees in “sustainability.” Many large companies tout the concept and boast a sustainability department, and the United Nations has hundreds of projects concerned with sustainability throughout its many agencies and programs.

But as with many vague, feel-good concepts–“natural” and “locavorism” come to mind–it contains more than a little sophistry. For example, sustainability in agriculture is often linked to organic food production, whose advocates tout it as a “sustainable” way to feed the planet’s expanding population. According to the Worldwatch Institute, “Organic farming has the potential to contribute to sustainable food security by improving nutrition intake and sustaining livelihoods in rural areas, while simultaneously reducing vulnerability to climate change and enhancing biodiversity.” This is wishful thinking, if not outright delusion.

What does “sustainable” really mean, and how does it relate to organic methods of food production, compared to the more advanced methods of today’s modern farming practices? Definitions vary widely; a typically subjective and circular definition comes from Dr. John E. Ikerd, extension professor at the University of Missouri:

A sustainable agriculture must be economically viable, socially responsible and ecologically sound. The economic, social and ecological are interrelated, and all are essential to sustainability. An agriculture that uses up or degrades its natural resource base, or pollutes the natural environment, eventually will lose its ability to produce. . . a sustainable agriculture must be all three–ecologically sound, economically viable and socially responsible. And the three must be in harmony.

The organic movement touts the sustainability of their methods, but its claims do not withstand scrutiny. For example, a study published earlier this year in the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences found that the potential for groundwater contamination can be dramatically reduced if fertilizers are distributed through the irrigation system according to plant demand during the growing season. But organic farming depends on compost, the release of which is not matched with plant demand.

The study found that “intensive organic agriculture relying on solid organic matter, such as composted manure that is implemented in the soil prior to planting as the sole fertilizer, resulted in significant down-leaching of nitrate” into groundwater. Especially with many of the world’s most fertile farming regions in the throes of drought and aquifer depletion–which was the subject of a 60 Minutes segment on November 16--increased nitrate in groundwater is hardly a mark of sustainability.

Organic farming might work well for certain local environments on a small scale, but its farms produce far less food per unit of land and water than conventional ones. The low yields of organic agriculture--typically 20%-50% percent lower than conventional agriculture–impose various stresses on farmland and especially on water consumption. A British meta-analysis published in the Journal of Environmental Management (2012) addressed the question whether organic farming reduces environmental impacts. It identified some of the stresses that were higher in organic, as opposed to conventional, agriculture: “ammonia emissions, nitrogen leaching and nitrous oxide emissions per product unit were higher from organic systems,” as were “land use, eutrophication potential and acidification potential per product unit.”

Lower organic crop yields are largely inevitable, given the systematic, arbitrary rejection of various advanced methods and technologies in organic farming. Organic affords limited pesticide options, difficulties in meeting peak fertilizer demand, and the lack of access to genetically engineered varieties. If the scale of organic production were significantly increased, the lower yields would increase the pressure for the conversion of more land to farming and on water supplies, both of which are serious environmental issues.